For a
reason that I really can’t explain, we haven’t programmed a lot of guitar music
on our Friday podcasts. This oversight is remedied today with this set of
selections played brilliantly by Spain’s Narciso Yepes, who is considered one
of the finest virtuoso classical guitarists of the twentieth century

Yepes’ father
gave him his first guitar when he was four years old, and took the boy five
miles on a donkey to and from lessons three days a week. Later his family moved
to Valencia when the Spanish Civil War started in 1936. When he was 13, he was
accepted to study at the Conservatorio de Valencia with the pianist and
composer Vicente Asencio. Here he followed courses in harmony,
composition, and performance.

According
to Yepes, Asencio "was a pianist who loathed the guitar because a
guitarist couldn't play scales very fast and very legato, as on a piano or a
violin" Through practice and improvement in his technique, Yepes could
match Asencio's piano scales on the guitar. Yepes is credited by many with
developing the A-M-I technique of playing notes with the ring (Anular), middle
(Medio), and index (Indice) fingers of the right hand.

In 1947 he
made his Madrid début (performing Joaquín Rodrigo's Concierto de
Aranjuez with Ataúlfo Argenta conducting the Spanish National Orchestra).
The overwhelming success of this performance brought him renown from critics
and public alike. Soon afterwards, he began to tour, visiting Switzerland,
Italy, Germany, and France.

In 1950,
after performing in Paris, he spent a year studying interpretation under the
violinist George Enescu, and the pianist Walter Gieseking. He also studied
informally with Nadia Boulanger. This was followed by a long period in Italy
where he profited from contact with artists of every kind.

In 1964,
Yepes performed the Concierto de Aranjuez with the Berlin Philharmonic
Orchestra, premièring the ten-string guitar, which he invented in
collaboration with the renowned guitar maker José Ramírez III. After 1964,
Yepes used the ten-string guitar exclusively, touring all six inhabited
continents, performing in recitals as well as with the world's leading
orchestras, giving an average of 130 performances each year.

Apart from
being a consummate musician, Yepes was also a significant scholar. His research
into forgotten manuscripts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries resulted
in the rediscovery of numerous works for guitar or lute. Among these, I
programmed his Suite Española after the lute music of Gaspar Sanz.

In addition
to the solo works by Sanz, I programmed a few guitar standards by fellow
Spaniard Francisco de Asís Tárrega y Eixea known for such pieces as Recuerdos
de la Alhambra. He is often called "the father of classical
guitar" and is considered one of the greatest guitarists of all time.

Heitor
Villa-Lobos wrote
numerous orchestral, chamber, instrumental and vocal works influenced by both
Brazilian folk music and by stylistic elements from the European classical
tradition. His Etudes for guitar (1929) were dedicated to Andrés Segovia while
his 5 Preludes (1940) were dedicated to Arminda Neves d’Almeida, a.k.a.
"Mindinha", both are important works in the guitar repertory. I have
programmed today Yepes in the preludes and in the concerto for guitar and small
orchestra.

The theme to
the 1952 film Forbidden Games (Orig. French Jeux interdits)
by René Clément is a work "Romance" which Yepes claims to have
written when he was a young boy. Despite Yepes's claims of composing it, the
piece ("Romance") has often been attributed to other authors –
"Estudio en Mi de Rubira", "Spanish Romance", "Romance
de España", "Romance de Amor", "Romance of the
Guitar", "Romanza" and "Romance d'Amour" among other
names; the earliest known recording of the work dates from a cylinder from
around 1900.

Yepes died
after a nearly 50-year career in 1997, 20 years ago this past May.

A few years
ago, I shared an OTF post on OperaLively I had called “Opera Domestica”, and it
featured a series of MTV-like opera video clips created by Canadian composer
Alexina Louie. These “short operas” – typically 3 to 5 minutes long,
essentially encapsulated a single aria.

The works I
chose to assemble in today’s montage are not too dissimilar – they are
essentially single arias, meant to stand alone in concert, and in some cases
sound like they’re taken out of a larger (contemporaneous) operatic work, inspired by a character from literature.

The text
for Scena di Berenice is taken from Act 3, scene 9 of Pietro Metastasio’s
Antigono, a libretto which had originally been set by Hasse in 1743 and
subsequently by over thirty composers, including Jommelli (1746), Gluck
(1756), Traetta (1764), Paisiello (1785) and Joseph Haydn (1795-97).
Although betrothed to Antigono, Berenice is actually in love with his son,
Demetrio. Torn between his feelings for Berenice and his filial duty, Demetrio
can see no way out of his predicament, and has resolved to kill himself. In
“Berenice, che fai?” the disconsolate heroine deliriously laments her fate and
longs to die alongside her beloved.

The
settings by Haydn and Avondano open this week’s montage.

Mozart
wrote several concert arias
and I retained a few for today’s montage. The librettists for these arias
include Vittorio Amedeo Cigna-Santi and Michele Sarcone.

At age 11 Juan Crisostomo Arriaga started composing major chamber, orchestral and choral works, the most remarkable of which was a two-act opera 'Los Esclavos Felices', written at the age of 13 and successfully performed in Bilbao.

When Arriaga was 16 he was sent to study at the Paris Conservatoire where the Principal, Cherubini, judged Arriaga's choral work 'Et Vitam Venturi' (now lost) to be a masterpiece. He absorbed all the principles of harmony and counterpoint in only three months and two years later, aged 18, he became the youngest professor ever appointed at the Conservatoire.

Among Arriaga’s Paris works is Erminia, based on lyrics by the French poet Vinnay but sung in an Italian translation by Giovanni Gandolfi. Erminia is sometimes referred to as an opera, because it suggests two scenes.

It's one
of those songs which has such a fantasy feel about it. I think people should
just listen to it, think about it, and then make up their own minds as to what
it says to them... "Bohemian Rhapsody" didn't just come out of thin
air. I did a bit of research although it was tongue-in-cheek and mock opera.
Why not?

Freddie
Mercury

To close
the montage, I selected Queen’s "Bohemian Rhapsody”. The song is highly
unusual for a popular single in featuring no chorus, combining disparate
musical styles and containing lyrics which eschew conventional love-based
narratives for allusions to murder and nihilism. It consists of sections,
beginnin g with an introduction, then a piano ballad, before a guitar solo leads
to an operatic interlude. A hard rock part follows this and it concludes with a
coda.

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